You can blame the tech industry for this one. Criminalizing copyright infringement didn't get much traction until Microsoft, Oracle, etc, made a big deal about it in the context of large-scale piracy by the Chinese, etc.
There were criminal penalties for willful, for-profit performances of dramatic and music works in 1897 US copyright law. The 1909 act expanded this to all types of willful, for-profit infringement. I'm reasonably sure neither Microsoft nor Oracle had anything to do with this.
The DMCA was 1998. Wasn't that around the same time that Microsoft was getting hammered by the DOJ?
My impression is that the general consensus has that being about the time that Microsoft learned its lesson about ignoring lobbying. Maybe Oracle had something to do with it, but it seems like Microsoft probably missed that particular ship.
The only real way to get money out of politics is to stop allowing politics to have such a high return on investment. Unfortunately, that ship has probably sailed for good.